We continue to make good progress on Hero-U, particularly on the art front. I talked a few months ago about the issues we were having getting 2D character animation to look good in our "fantasy realistic" environment.

The art team has completed sketches of every scene in the game. They are about 70% complete on final painting and rendering. We should reach "art complete" in about 3 months.
There is much more to this project than the actual game. The in-game and physical Yearbooks are also coming along very well. Almost 100 backers submitted photos, and Paul and Eric have turned all of them into works of art. Chris Fong is working on summarizing the last 18 months worth of meetings into a series of Insider Access articles. I will release these over time to the Humble Store pages of our "Insider Access" backers.

Disbarred Bards

On the programming side, the Composer tool is essentially complete, although Rob will add new features to it throughout Hero-U game development. Composer provides a structured way for us to create game content and put it directly into the game. It also has features that will allow us to localize Hero-U into multiple other languages.

Composer Script from the Demo

Inside the game, Jonathan and Jerry have created a system that handles displaying rooms, props, and animated characters; letting the player interact with any object on the screen; and much more. Jonathan is currently back to working on the combat system now that we have finished animation approval. We are fine-tuning the turn-based combat interface to make it intuitive and exciting.

How You Can Still Help

Let your friends know about the Hero-U project and the www.hero-u.net web site. In addition to the Leaders blog and forums, we have two store pages. On the preorder page (http://www.hero-u.net/hero_u_preorder.html), fans can get a discounted price on the Hero-U game, digital sound track, art book, digital yearbook, and even access to beta tests.

The Collectibles page (http://www.hero-u.net/hero_u_collect.html) is the place to support Hero-U while getting cool limited-edition collectibles – toy meeps, t-shirts, caps, and keychains.
Every purchase and preorder helps us pay team members and contractors so that we can make Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption a great game. Thank you very much to everyone who has backed Hero-U so far, whether by Kickstarter, PayPal, or Humble Store pre-order.